Learning to Drive

My assignment for May writing class is about learning to drive. I have a little history first. Cars were sort of invented in my parents lifetime. When my father graduated from college he was a fireman for the Santa Fe railroad. He loved the new invention of automobiles. His brother in laws put up the money and he opened a repair shop in a small town near Topeka, I think Osage City and after I was born he moved to Topeka. He got a battery dealership and as he was very smart in mechanics went to work. He taught my mother to drive and then she in turn taught others. There was no place that taught people to drive they just did. However there were not many cars on the street. My mother taught her children to drive in the Topeka Cemetery, Mount Hope as she felt we would not harm any of the inhabitants. By the time I was in high school they offered drivers training to anyone in the class of auto mechanics. I had one friend who took the course and ended up joining the army because she could drive. I learned fast and I was probably 12 or 14. I had to wait until my legs were long enough to reach the pedals. One lesson I drove on a gravel road to Scranton, Kansas where my graaandmother Burkhardt lived. I got my license when I was 13 or 14, I think it was a learners permit. I ran lots of errands as I was always eager to drive. When my sister and I were in college she had an out of town boyfriend so they were always borrowing my parents car. I was going with Ray, later to be me husband and asked him why did we not borrow my parents car and I found he did not know how to drive. His parents had a car when he was small and they had a wreck and he was hurt so they had no car. I took him out to the river road which was a gravel road and preceeded to teach him. However he drove us into the ditch and we had to be pulled out. He got his license and brought a 1928 green car which he called the Green Hornet. It was kind of noisy and when he would bring me home on dates it would make a great deal of noise and woke my parents as we were generally very late as he worked for a morning paper so our dates were late. My dad would tell him that his axle was in trouble and he would go to the junk yard and pick up a new one for him. One women my mother taught had two flags a red and a green one and when she came to a corner and was going right she used the green if left it was red. So it all boils down to the fact I learned in a Cemetery.